High-tech advances make sexting too easy for youths

Monday

Mar 24, 2014 at 6:00 AM

New apps posing new dangers for youths online.

EASTON – Parents and teachers are struggling with ways to keep kids safe in cyber-space.Just two years ago, students at Oliver Ames took part in a series of talks with experts about Facebook. Students were given guidelines about how to use the medium responsibly and think about how colleges and employers in the future will look at their Facebook pages, OA Principal Wes Paul said. But a recent sexting incident involved three OA high school students.

Sexting means sending inappropriate and or nude photos through mobile phones. This incident was reported to Easton police on Feb. 5 and didn’t take place at the high school, said investigators. Police said the 17-year-old male student downloaded the photos of the 15- and 17-year-old females to his iPad using an app called Snapchat.

“This does happen everywhere,” said Joan Sullivan, an Easton parent who has children in the eighth and 10th grades. Sullivan is also the chairwoman of the Parent Advisory Council at Easton Middle School. She had her children read The Enterprise article about the sexting case involving OA students. “I’m trying to keep an open dialogue with my kids. We discussed the incident. I hope parents don’t have blinders on.”

The technology changes quickly and recent apps like Snapchat, Kik and Ask.fm have made it easier than ever for kids to post the most personal information, including photos and videos online.

“Parents are totally freaked out and overwhelmed by everything out there, they are drowning in all this technology,” said cyber expert Katie Greer, the former director of Internet safety for the state Attorney General’s office as well as a former state police intelligence analyst. Greer has talked with thousands of parents, teachers and students about the best practices to keep kids safe in a technology-driven world.

A recent poll at Easton Middle School showed that 90 percent of students polled are using at least one app, like Facebook, Instagram, Kik or Snapchat. It also showed that 54 percent of students are using Snapchat.

The poll was done ahead of a visit to the Easton Middle School by Greer back in February. She spoke about Internet safety with the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders in separate session and then spoke with more than 200 parents that evening. “All of these social networking sites can be abused,” she said.

Luke Carroll, the principal of Easton Middle School, said, “We ran the program for kids to make good choices now and in the future.”.

The Easton Middle School poll found 45 percent of students spend one to two hours a day on an app or device. About 73 percent of students are more likely to communicate with friends using some device than speak to them in person.

“Our goal is to help kids navigate this technology and watch out for pitfalls,” Carroll said.

Colleen Less, the chairman of the Easton School Committee and a parent with one child in the Easton Middle School and another at Oliver Ames, said figuring out the appropriate age for cellphone use is difficult.

“This is what we have to figure out as parents is that kids under a certain age shouldn’t have unlimited access through an iPhone,” she said.

Some kids lack the emotional maturity to understand what they are downloading, or who they are talking to in a chat room, said Less. Her kids know she will look at their passwords and calls, she said. “We’re supposed to be checking. It’s our job as parents.”

The 1,200 students at Oliver Ames are allowed to bring cellphones to school and are allowed to access them during lunch or during class with a teacher’s permission, said Principal Paul.

“How much information do you want to release to the world?” he asked. “Once you post it, it goes out to the world. It is a learning curve for all of us in society.”

There will be an assembly for the entire school in the wake of the sexting incident, although a date is not yet set, he said. The 17-year-old suspect is going through a six-month diversion project supervised by the Bristol County district attorney’s Office. The teen is required to do 40 hours of community service, said Gregg Miliotte, the spokesman for the Bristol County District Attorney’s office.

“Educating students about the law and the potential lifelong consequences and the impact it has on the victim is key,” Miliotte said.

Nick Cidado, 18, a senior at Oliver Ames High School, said he hadn’t heard about the case involving three OA students. “I’m surprised to hear that,” he said on Monday.

Brad Cicchett and Ashley Breen, both seniors at OA, also had not heard of the incident. “But I think that it happens a lot more than people think,” Breen said.

Mitch Librett, a professor of criminal justice at Bridgewater State University and a former police officer, said the growing popularity of apps like Snapchat present a problem.

“This can be very dangerous and have consequences that are harmful for the school community. They (teens) have the ability to instantaneously send photos and videos and the door is open for impulsive behavior,” Librett said.

Recent incidents in the region have occurred at other schools. Last April, Taunton school and law enforcement officials held a series of educational assemblies in response to a police investigation into allegations that students at Taunton High School as well as others were involved in sharing and posting nude photos of other students online.

Last spring, Bridgewater police investigated a sexting incident involving eighth-graders. According to officials, one 14-year-old female student voluntarily texted an inappropriate photo of herself to another student that was then forwarded to other students.

And, in Stoughton, a former student filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the principal and other town officials after she claimed they did nothing to stop the harassment in the fall of 2007 after she sent nude photos of herself at 14 to a 17-year-old boy at the high school. That case is still ongoing.

Brockton School Superintendent Kathleen Smith said that officials are currently looking to update their cyber policies. On April 9 they are holding a workshop called “Texting, Sexting and Online Trends Parents and Teens Should Know About.”

“The kids are way ahead of us on a lot of this. They are engaging in behavior that could cause them to have a criminal record so we need to take it seriously,” Smith said.

Middleboro School Superintendent Rosalie Weiss said the district has a student handbook that deals with acceptable use of electronic devices and Internet policies. “This is a problem that happens everywhere,” Weiss said.

Stoughton Deputy Police Chief Robert Devine said that all you need to do is go on Twitter to see how pervasive the problem of sexting is.

“We try to explain the legal ramifications to kids,” he said. “The larger picture is you want to make sure that these kids have enough respect for themselves.”

Jennifer Bray may be reached at jbray@enterprisenews.com or follow her on Twitter @JenniferB_ENT.